The Art I Consumed in January 2020

Literature

Game of Thrones (ASOIAF #1)
by George RR Martin
7/10
I really want to avoid any kind of book to HBO comparison in these things because I do intend to finish the series (of books) this year, but I will say that what people say really is true. First, that season 1 of HBO's show is just about as perfect a book adaptation as there can be. It captures at least 80% of the plot and all of the mood, tension, and character beats that I read. The last great book adaptation I can think of has to be Gone Girl, but this one may be even better. Secondly, yes the books are better. I don't want to get in to the reasons though, because if I do feel inclined to do that I would do it on a completely different blog post. I really enjoyed Game of Thrones and the heavy description and exposition was not as excessive as I remember at all. Perhaps it is because I read this one before, about 10 years ago, and I was 16 and had a short attention span. Even though I did have a visual reference for much of the novel and knew what to expect in terms of plot, there was still a lot of lore and subtle character moments that caught me by surprise. Fantasy series have never been my thing, but George RR Martin writes with lore that never feels frivolous and always feels more like real history to me which is what kept my interest throughout. Even the strictly fantasy-like elements are treated like religions, ecological phenomenons, medicine, and war. Apart from the dragons, everything feels grounded in a reality that I can believe in every bit as much as I can be in awe of, not unlike LOTR but of course completely different as well.

A Clash of Kings (ASOIAF #2)
by George RR Martin
"A Game of Thrones" sets the stage for the historical and political background of the land, ensuring the huge cast of characters each covers their own distinct yet interconnected grounds of Westeros, and this was done very well.
However "A Clash of Kings" is more interesting to me because it's focus is more on the economic realities and how the huge wars in the clash of the 4 kings effects the realm, including the poor. It also introduces a number of new characters to lead chapters, offering fresh and horrifying perspective to the behind-the-scenes of the wars and political chess moves.
This book built tension very well and no character is helpless or insignificant, nor their perspectives not timely and essential, so I was constantly left on edge. The incredible release in the battle of the Blackwater had my heart pounding in a way a book hasn't done for me in ages!
Incredible. I love how dreary, hopeless, and tense this part of GRRM's story felt after the fantastical emotional climaxes of the first book. In this addition many of the tertiary stories also begin to flesh out and get very exciting, such as Davos, Daenerys, and Jon's chapters.
This was way way better than I expected and I am very much looking forward to A Storm of Swords which is rumoured to be the best of the series.

Film & TV

Booksmart
Directed by Olivia Wilde
7/10
I had a really great time with this film. People have been calling it the "Superbad" of this generation and this is a pretty apt description, and the films even reflect the current sociological times they represent by what kind of hatefulness their character's are motivated by. In "Booksmart", the main characters do get in to a power struggle which threatens their friendship, they navigate the film with a sense of entitlement as to what they believe they deserve from their peers, and there is definitely a character arch for both of them involving learning to love themselves. All of these things it shares with Superbad. However, "Booksmart" is infinitely more wholesome and nobody nor any group of people really feel like the butt of the joke. The community of people showcased in this film are surprisingly fleshed out and always defy stereotypes where as the adolescent side characters in "Superbad" are basically just women who are available for the men to have sex with, with little else to offer. "Booksmart" is witty, fun, adventurous, and hilarious from start to finish. Though some of the Zoomer humour went straight over my head or incited an involuntary cringe for me, I really enjoyed watching this film. If I had seen this as a teen coming of age, I would have absolutely given this a higher rating because throughout the movie I got this sense that it would be a life-changing film to watch as a teenager and would probably be quoted to death much like my generation did to "The Hangover" (Bless our deprived souls. That movie is not and never was good).

Goon
Directed by Michael Dowse
5/10
Is it unpatriotic of me to say "meh" about this one?
Sometimes it was funny, but only in the most awkward and seemingly unintentional ways at times. The only real laugh I got from this film was the one dude who said "There are two rules here buddy! One, don't touch my percosets. Two, do you have any fucking percosets?!". Maybe you actually have to love hockey to get this one, or maybe I am biased because I feel put off by Sean William Scott and I can't exactly place my finger on why. If Jay Barushel weren't in this I may have given it a 4/10. Spicy unpatriotic take.




Knives Out
Directed by Rian Johnson
9/10
Easily the most fun I've had in a theatre this year. I can't believe this film was as good as it was. Clue-style mystery thrillers have long since died in Hollywood and perhaps for good reason (Murder on the Orient Express was abysmal). Yet, this movie comes out and blows me away. Every performance is astounding and the chemistry between everyone in this cast is incredible. There was not one moment I was not entertained, shocked, or impressed. The cinematography is sharp and interesting, the twists are legitimately gripping and understanding everything as it unfolds around you wisely takes second place to the drama, tension, and action which make up the bulk of the movie. At every point, the mystery and intrigue is balanced and made more interesting by the explosive tension and drama (and vice versa). Everything is just so well done and it has an unexpectedly warm-hearted ending to it as well. I felt my heart swell at the same time that I felt an internal cackle of pleasure for the filthy rich getting what they deserve. I am so glad this was a box office hit- hopefully Hollywood takes this as a sign that they can in fact make buttloads of money off original screenplays.

Jojo Rabbit
Directed by Taika Waititi
8/10
Jojo Rabbit is so wonderful. I generally like coming of age films but a lot of them are very similar and don't offer anything particularly new or nuanced. However, what makes Jojo's coming of age so interesting and meaningful is that there are so many elements which back up his change in beliefs, virtue, and sense of self which are unique to this film (in addition to the setting, obviously). Jojo does not just grow up and "become a man". We see Jojo realise not just that his beliefs are wrong but that they come from a place of cultural manipulation. Jojo does not just learn what love is and have his relationships with peers and his mother change, Jojo learns that the qualities exhibited in the people he love are directly linked to their political actions against his own beliefs and he has to process that on his own. Once the thought came to me, it wouldn't stopped being proven true. I believe this movie is about incel culture every bit as it is about nazi-ism. Jojo legitimately goes through an arc where he is shown that he doesn't actually hate jews, he is just a lonely kid who wants to belong to a community which tell him he is special. This film is legitimately hysterical, genuinely sweet and moving, and hits emotional beats with deliberate care and weight. This film is a marvel and way more topical than Black Kkklansmen. Hot take. Finally, best child performance I've seen since Waititi's last film (Hunt for the Wilderpeople). I cant help but wonder if he just has a talent for directing kids.

I Lost My Body
Jeremy Clapin
8/10
The phrase gets thrown around a lot, but there actually is nothing else like it. It's incredible how well this gentle and ethereal film is held together and structured considering the fact that it doesn't really have a conclusion and spends at least 1/3rd of the time following a decapitated hand. The animation is nothing to write home about but the hand sequences are amazing and legitimately gripping and emotional somehow. It's funny, but I can see this film being just as good without dialogue. If there was no access to subtitles, I am still fairly positive that it would've moved me all the same. It has a really strange quality to it I can't explain, but you'll know it when you feel it. This film made me feel lonely but in the warmest, most comforting way. I really like this romance featuring a pizza delivery dude and his decapitated hand. 

Game Night
Directed by John Francis Daley
6/10
What compelled me to watch this? I was high, I loved the first 10 minutes of it, and I believe that Jason Bateman can be good (see Ozark and The Gift). This movie steers it's ship in such an incomprehensibly scattered direction, I frequently could not tell whether it was trying to be smart or if it was being a spoof of a heist movie with some kind of uncomfortable and uninteresting detachment. It just kind of sucks and the drama between the main couple about their fertility is so sloppily rushed in the end too. Every 15 minutes after the first 30 went like this: couple thinks they have figured it out BUT that was the plan all along BUT no it isn't BUT some of it is and so they have to tie up that loose end before they can rescue X BUT then another thing happens. It was tiresome to watch and about an hour in I was just waiting for it to be done. That being said, the first scene with the neighbour and a lot of the bits in the neighbour's house are great. I fuckin love Todd from Breaking Bad. The dude was born for these roles.

Little Women
Directed by Greta Gerwig
10/10
I'm writing a big one about this movie later so I'll keep this brief. In my opinion Greta Gerwig is the most important and influential female writer/director in Hollywood. I've never left a film feeling so good and I went in to this film pretty much exclusively to see what Gerwig would do with the source material, which I don't remember liking at all. After seeing this film I texted all of my female friends and immediately told them I love them. By no stretch am I a spiritual feminist of any sort, but this film does something incredible with feminism and frankly it has completely changed my worldview because of it. This film is not just objectively well done with it's incredible performances, soundtrack, and artistic direction, but it tackles an important issue in feminism without being at all accusatory. This entire film preaches "we are all in this together" while not for a moment stealing away from the independent meaningful journeys of each of the sisters. Femininity is intrinsically linked to kindness, community, and supporting others. I have never looked at it this way and have famously struggled with my relationship to femininity my whole life, but this film showed me I have been tricked all along in to thinking that it is the cooking the made me feminine, not my love for feeding and caring for others. I need to stop now, or else this will be the rest of the blog post. I have bigger things to say about it, but I must end it here for now.

Blue Jay
Directed by Alex Lehmann
7/10
After watching Little Women and reading about Tyrion eating women out such that his beard gets soaked in pussy juice, I felt the need to watch a more overtly romantic film.
The thing with Blue Jay is that it will at first seem like it is trying too hard to show you that it can do casual and believable dialogue and it ends up feeling kind of pointless and very boring. But stick with it, because once it finds its point, it has a great emotional climax. I adore Mark Duplass and was as impressed with his performance as ever. This sweet little film perfectly captures that vertigo and time void you encounter when visiting your home town and what its like to catch up with an old flame, but it ends up doing a lot with this simple set up such that it never feels cliche and manipulative. I found myself smiling even when it was sad and stunned with melancholy even when it was being playful. Emotion is layered throughout this film with great pacing and nuance later on but boy, that first act is an effort to get through.  

Bronson
Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn
8/10
Tom Hardy was born for this. Not just for the role of Charles Bronson, but for the art of playing an unhinged mad man. After watching this I am 100% sure God's plan for him intended on his playing Venom. The music fuckin punches you in the face and then the follow up is a psychotic buttered up naked tackle with Tom Hardy's excessive saliva projecting all over your damn face and I loved every moment of it. The memetic energy of this film is almost overwhelming but never to the point where it feels like *just* a meme. It is, in addition to being entertaining and shocking and full of Hardy's wierd clumsy voracious energy, an interesting film in terms of its cinematography as well. Leave it to Refn. I hesitate to say this is my favourite Refn film, but it is the one I would watch at any given time without hesitation. I cannot say the same for the others.

Snowpiercer
Directed by: Bong Joon Ho
8.5/10
My man, Bong Joon Ho. He never dissapoints.
Was this film a little overly ambitious and not totally logical? Yes. Yet, was it undeniably interesting, inventive, unique, and gripping? Absolutely yes. There was not one moment, not one new piece of information or development that didn't have me glued to the screen. I do not care about the plot holes and I do not care that it was perhaps unintentionally hilarious at times. The social commentary of this film is ripe and shown with incredible visual metaphor and writing, Captain America knows babies taste best, and the action was amazing. I found myself thinking more about the social ecosystem and religion of the train long after the film ended and even if the last 2 minutes of the film really bug me, not a single other minute was wasted. So much was packed in to this film it's amazing even 50% of it stuck with me as much as it did. Maybe I just adore Tilda Swinton as an awful rich person, maybe I love the New Years eggs, maybe I love it all and I can't stand that the majority of reviews on this movie on IMDB cannot tear their critique away from the fact that bugs don't survive the cold. Say it with me children; "God bless the Eternal Engine and fuck these people on IMDB!".

The Endless
Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
7.5/10
I love the understated intimacy of the relationship between the brother protagonists of this film, but I was let down several times by the lack of any emotional feedback in scenes where they are together. I found that the performances of Aaron and Justin weren't bad at all when they were apart, but in scenes when they were reacting to something together everything felt very stinted and dead. A couple of times, one of them were witness to something extremely un-nerving and would react with obvious fear, yet then they'd run in to their brother and be really awkwardly casual. They were just really awkward in a couple of scenes, and there was a lot of corny dialogue too. However, despite these setbacks to my immersion, I found the core concept of the film to be extremely interesting and I think it was directed really well. The building tension translated very well in what was and wasn't shown and the red herrings never felt cheap because they always were an answer to something, if not the questions I'm sure some audiences wanted answered. I also really liked the ending for hitting an emotional beat that didn't feel super obvious or cliche where a lesser film may have just gone for a simple "I'm sorry I never told you I love you". A lot of the sci-fi ideas behind this movie will stick with me and contemplating the psychology behind the older brother's guilt and duty to his younger brother was interesting to watch and infer as the film progressed. Oh, and the bit about living in capitalism is just doing the same shitty day over and over was pretty based.

Video Games

Armello
from League of Geeks
7/10
I am at the point where I am begging people to buy this game so online matches can be actually accessible. I love that tabletop board games can be made it in to videogames so well now. My love for board game endures and I am always so thrilled to discover games like Armello which let me reconnect with that love. I adore the art and I respect that the game gives players multiple different ways to battle the RNG factor while not getting too heavy strategically. Certainly there is strategy and over the course of playing it constantly all month, I've begun to pick up on it's nuance. But, I also love that even losing can feel fun. The dice battles are disgustingly satisfying.The AI is occasionally impossibly stupid but it's kind of impressive how fun it is to play with them even with this in mind because they only get impossible stupid in the last couple of turns for some reason. I will kiss the feet of anyone who buys this and plays it online. I need it to have an online community. It is the only thing stopping it from being a 9/10.   

Flame and the Flood
from The Molassis Flood
8/10
I think The Long Dark tricked me in to believing that all survival games have to feel like a brutal slog that wants you to fail. The Flame in the Flood is so the opposite of The Long Dark not just in aesthetic and the fact that it has a soundtrack that absolutely SLAPS, but because the sound design and your happy dog companion appear to root for you the whole time. It is difficult and I died of pneumonia and infection over and over again, but rafting down the river further and further in to different areas felt satisfying and like a real journey. My complaint with a lot of survival games is that it never feels like you get anywhere and feels kind of pointless unless you get really lucky or never make any mistakes. I loved this little indie survival game. The only thing stopping it from getting a higher rating is the fact that boars and wolves spawn camp you at churches. Rude.

Feather
from Samurai Punk
6/10
Paid 20$ for 30 minutes of content. It was soothing and fun and looks pretty, I guess.

Baba is You
from Arvi Teikari
9/10
My husband and I love working through this game together. Every element of Baba is You is a puzzle and unlike other games that stump you with levels which challenge their pre-existing system, Baba is You is incredibly simple from a systems perspective, but instead chooses you to think far outside the box and reconsider everything you thought about language. The staggering numbers of ways elements can interact with each other in this game and the fact that there are multiple solutions to any given puzzle keep it fresh and fascinating. I never feel like I can't figure something out because I am dumb- I always get that satisfying feeling knowing that there is something I can learn from pushing these words around and turning Baba in to anything and everything. Baba, I love you.

My Friend Pedro
from Deadtoast Entertainment
7/10
I had a lot of fun with this chaotic bass drop of a video game but I have no desire to pick it up again, even if it may be tempting to get better scores and unlock the secret weapons after story mode. It's not that I have any "issues" with the game per say, but I think watching footage of it makes it seem like it is more exciting than it actually is. If you're going for a speed-run I could see it being more challenging, and maybe it was never meant to be a challenge but instead just a fun experience. It certainly does have incredible flow broken up only by a couple of annoying platforming levels. The game is also unapologetically wacky and a few levels had me grinning (such as the final boss fight where you ride a twirling walrus) and there are some awesome treats thrown at you along the way such as the ability to chain attacks together while on a skateboard or a rolling oil drum. The power fantasy of My Friend Pedro is a fucking real one and is a total blast and I'm a little ashamed to say it just wasn't enough to hold my attention. I found I couldn't do more than 2 or 3 levels at a time not because I was frustrated but because I just grew bored of how easily I could get through levels just by dodging bullets the whole time. Perhaps I wasn't committed enough to mastering the flow and point system of the game and thats why I didn't love it, but I still had a helluva time.